Growing Your Personal Education Infrastructure (PEI)
Matt’s Notes
Click on the button above to hear some introductory audio!
Good morning! And/or afternoon and/or evening!
Thanks for being here! Thanks especially to the students in Dr. Pam Gurney’s EDUC 5000 course at Thompson Rivers University, Learning about Learning. I was glad to hear from Pam, as she was and is an excellent colleague… who invited me many times to speak to her School of Education classes when I was in a then tenure-track role as Coordinator, Educational Technologies with the Learning Technology & Innovation (LT&I) group within the Open Learning Division. While my tenure-track appointment was not renewed… and, in fact, owing to this… I spent a significant amount of time during a 16-month period of unemployment… engaged in a wide variety of professional development activities… including, but not limited to, starting The Ed non-Tech Podcast with my fellow former Open Learning employee, Dr. Doug Reid.
Doug and I felt that the best topic we could speak to is a concept we coined on the podcast last fall… namely, Personal Education Infrastructure (PEI). In this lecture, Doug and I speak to PEI, and attendant educational theories, frameworks, and practices… as well as reflecting on our respective and shared experience as educators of many decades.
Please click the YouTube link below! You may also listen using the audio widget; this lecture will also be streamed via Spotify and other major audio sites… and shared on my personal LinkedIn page wherein I have some 1400 “followers”. Doug and I very much view this as a public exercise in knowledge construction and reflective educational practice. Please feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, or other feedback!
Acknowledgement
Thompson Rivers University campuses are on the traditional lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops campus) and the T’exelc (Williams Lake campus) within Secwépemc’ulucw, the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwépemc. We are grateful to be guests in these traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands where teaching and learning have taken place since time immemorial.
Why create a custom land acknowledgement? To show respect!
Click below for a few more thoughts on this…
Conceptual frameworks and learning theories
At this point in your programs or in your previous education, you have likely encountered a wide range of learning theories and/or conceptual framework.
Examples of learning theories include:
*There is some debate whether connectivism is considered a “proper” theory of learning.
Conceptual frameworks are more narrowly-focused than learning theories. They help educators move from educational ideas to educational actions.
The need for conceptual frameworks… and the kind of framework needed… varies by setting and context. For example, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is often associated with e-learning in post-secondary education. Other frameworks and/or models may be associated with specific academic or professional disciplines.
Additional frameworks and/or conceptual tools include:
- Communities of Practice (CoP)
- Bloom’s Taxonomy
- Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition (SAMR) Model
- Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate (ADDIE)
Implementation vis-à-vis Technology
- Enterprise systems
- Learning Management Systems (LMS)
- Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Generative AI applications*
Creating educational media
Test… experiment… make mistakes!
Social media (revisited)
Doug’s Notes
Personal Education Infrastructure (PEI) Lecture for EDUC 5000 Learning about Learning
“The mention of infrastructure is vital here”
… although the W3C WAI (World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative) guidelines for content accessibility are valuable, they should not be regarded as the only set of criteria, which developers of e-learning resources need to consider.
Kelly, B., Phipps, L., & Swift, E. (2004). Developing a holistic approach for e-learning accessibility. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 30(3).
… the lack of knowledge about how to make e-learning accessible was surprising, given the large number of tools that had been developed to supposedly help teachers in this endeavour.
Seale, J., & Cooper, M. (2010). E-learning and accessibility: An exploration of the potential role of generic pedagogical tools. Computers & Education, 54(4), 1107-1116.
This paper seeks to avoid both techno‐centric and econocentric analysis …
Roberts, T., & Hernandez, K. (2019). Digital access is not binary: The 5’A’s of technology access in the Philippines. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 85(4), e12084.
Goals of postsecondary education in Europe
- to prepare students for sustainable employment;
- to prepare students for life as active citizens in democratic societies;
- to cultivate students’ personal development;
- to develop and maintain, through teaching, learning and research, a broad, advanced knowledge base
Council of Europe (2007), Recommendation CM/Rec(2007)6 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the public responsibility for higher education and research.
Student agency refers to the quality of students’ self-reflective and intentional action and interaction with their environment.
Klemenčič, M. (2015). What is student agency? An ontological exploration in the context of research on student engagement. Student engagement in Europe: Society, higher education and student governance, 11, 29.
Agency also leads to successful socialisation and transition into the new communities.
Inouye, K., Lee, S., & Oldac, Y. I. (2023). A systematic review of student agency in international higher education. Higher Education, 86(4), 891-911.
The digital revolution is transforming education by using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve students’ learning outcomes. In the last 50 years, changes can be seen in every area of society, such as culture, entertainment, and social interaction. However, the current educational model is very similar to how it was back then.
Criollo-C, S., Guerrero-Arias, A., Jaramillo-Alcázar, Á., & Luján-Mora, S. (2021). Mobile learning technologies for education: Benefits and pending issues. Applied Sciences, 11(9), 4111.
Word of the podcast
Agency
Phrase of the podcast
Artifacts that trigger or extend learning
Question of the podcast
How can educators help those students and fellow educators that have accessibility challenges to increase personal learning agency?
Thanks again for inviting us to your class! We appreciate it very much!
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